Note: Full video of Drew Little's interview with THI is below this story.

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CHAPEL HILL – There is a saying in sports that goes something like this: If you don’t notice the referees or umpires, they must be doing a really good job.

The same thing can be said for the ultra-specialist football role as a long snapper. They only get noticed if they screw up. So, imagine the pressure.

“It’s not just me, it’s all of us specialists; the kickers and punters as well,” North Carolina senior long snapper Drew Little said. “It’s really a muscle-memory thing after you’ve done it a few years. You don’t really get nervous as much as you think you would, it’s repetitive every day, and you just keep practicing your craft.”

Snapping to punters and for field goals and extra points is indeed a craft. There is a fine-tuning element to it in which one must fine-tune what has been fine-tuned. They are specialists in every sense of the word.

And in Little, UNC has one of the best in the nation. Rarely do snappers get scholarships coming out of high school, but former Carolina Coach Larry Fedora thought so much of Little he extended to him for the class of 2019. So did NC State.

In fact, Little initially committed to the Wolfpack because State Coach Dave Doeren made the offer first. But Little eventually flipped to the Tar Heels after Fedora offered because it was his dream school. Yet, it almost didn’t play out.

Fedora was fired following the 2018 campaign and was replaced by Hall of Famer Mack Brown. Of the 13 prospects UNC had committed when Fedora was let go, Brown kept just six. Little was one of them.

“I’d never put a snapper on scholarship before he got here as a high school player,” Brown said, referring to Little. “I’d always made them earn it. And when Larry had already offered him, I was like, ‘I don’t know.’

“We don’t mention Drew and that’s a good thing. If you don’t know who the snapper is, that’s a good thing. If he’s getting a lot of attention, it ain’t good, brother.”

But Little was and is that good, and to Brown’s point, few fans know who he is.

A fullback and tight end on offense and starting linebacker at North Stanly High School in New London, NC, Little was just different. NCPreps.com Publisher and THI Director of Football Recruiting Deana King saw it firsthand, insisting he was good enough to get a scholarship before ever arriving in college.

“I just think he was a really hard worker and just wanted to perfect his craft, and knew that he had to be really, really good to get an offer because special teams, long snapper offers are very few if any,” King said. “And he made himself into one of the top long snappers in the country.”

This wasn’t Little’s preferred path to college, at least initially. The idea of snapping wasn’t his, it was his dad’s.

Chad Little is an assistant coach at North Stanly and recognized very early in Drew’s football life it was the best path for him to reach his goal of playing major college football, preferably for the Tar Heels.

“I suggested Drew to start snapping at a younger age because all he ever said to me, ‘Dad, I want to play Football at UNC, I want to play D1 ball…,” Chad Little recalled. “I knew he would need different position to make it to D1, so I introduced long snapping. He was close to 10 years old, I think.”

Little is now a senior at UNC and masterfully handles both snapping roles, which are quite pressure-packed. But one of the unique things about being ensconced in his craft is they learn early on how to handle the stress of it. Young snappers attend specialists camps, like the renowned Rubio Long Snapping camps, and the competitiveness among the campers is off the charts.

Because of those experiences battling the best in the nation, Little says snapping in front of 50,000 people really isn’t nerve wracking. But competing at one of those camps? That will get a guy ready to snap against Clemson or at Notre Dame in prime time.

“It’s very competitive and pressure-oriented,” he said, smiling. “They like to mess with you, try to get into your head.”

How about spraying water at the snapper, or tossing turf on the football as the snapper is in snap mode? They will do anything to throw off each other's focus. And that’s good, because that is exactly what opponents do during games.

“Last year, I was playing against Wake Forest or Duke, one of the guys comes up there and he starts yelling my name, and then started talking about one of my family members,” Little said, chuckling. “I was like, ‘That’s a little weird.' I haven’t heard that before. I was like, ‘Alright.’ But I still ended up doing a great job.”

Doing a great job doesn’t end once the ball is snapped. Little is still a football player lining up in the trenches each time he’s on the field. At a shade just under 6-feet and weighing 230 pounds, he is much smaller than other linemen, but not snappers. That is actually the norm for is position.

But he still must deal with combat along the line of scrimmage. On punts, though, defenders cannot line up straight ahead, the closest they can get to him are in the gaps outside his right or left shoulders. They can be head-on for field goals and extra points.

The punting situations, however, are where Little’s breadth of football skills are most tested. Remember, he is a football player first. Little was Defensive Player of the Year for his conference as a senior in high school, so popping dudes isn’t an issue to him. In fact, he has registered six tackles in his UNC career. Blocking and helping to protect Carolina’s punter are part of the job, too.

So, let’s say it’s fourth-and-seven and the Tar Heels have the ball on their own 38-yard-line, what is Little focusing on as he runs onto the field?

“When I first get out there, I look at the play clock, because everything’s on me, and I try to make sure I don’t mess up what I’ve got to do,” he explained. “When I’m lined up, everybody else gets lined up, and that’s when we get the cadence.

“So, I try to get out there and get set before everyone else does, and then once that happens, I don’t really worry too much about the snap. I think about what I want to do, I think about the guy in front of me, how I’m going to get down the field and help my team out.”

Getting down the field means executing his lane responsibility, which everyone on the punt team has to a degree. In Little’s lane, he gets downfield and tries to keep outside leverage.

“Don’t let them bounce it outside of me,” he said.

Outside of UNC, Little wants to keep playing.

Ethan Albright was an All-ACC offensive tackle at UNC but was undrafted in 1994. He switched to long snapper and played 16 seasons in the NFL. Little is big enough, athletic enough, and has the desire to get to the next level. But more refinement is needed.

“I’ve definitely been thinking about that and I definitely want to get there,” he said. “I have a lot to do to get there. I think I need to be a little more consistent and work on my blocking a little bit. But other than that, I need to establish a plan to help me get there.”

That next step may take another year-plus. Little can use the Covid year and return for the 2023 season at UNC. It would give him more time to advance his skills and prepare for the next level. Plus, he just likes it in Chapel Hill.

“I’ve definitely thought about that, and I really think about coming back because I don’t think I’m ready to leave this place yet,” he said. “But time will tell, and we’ll play it by ear.”

Brown might want Little to put it off another year.

“Drew is so good,” Carolina’s coach said. “We’ll really miss Drew when he leaves.”

Little will certainly leave a legacy. How much so? Most fans don’t know who he is, and that’s because Little has been so efficient in his craft.